405

International Journal of Mechanical and Materials Engineering (IJMME), Vol.6 (2011), No.3, 405-413
STRESS WAVE METHOD FOR IDENTIFICATION OF VISCOELASTIC MATERIAL
PROPERTY BASED ON FINITE-ELEMENT INVERSE-ANALYSIS

F.E. Gunawan
Jl KH Syahdan 9, Jakarta 11480, Indonesia
Industrial Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, Bina Nusantara University
Email: f.e.gunawan@gmail.com, fgunawan@binus.edu

Received 28 September 2011, Accepted 15 December 2011
ABSTRACT
This paper proposes a procedure to identify the viscoelastic
material constants using the inverse analysis and the finite
element analysis. The procedure requires two measured
data: the applied impact-force and the structural elastic
response at a point, and further assumes the material
viscoelasticity following the Prony series expansion. In this
procedure, we infer the viscoelastic material constants in the
following steps: we initialize the viscoelastic material
constants, and then calculate the stress state at the point, and
finally, we check the equilibrium of the constitute equation.
The procedure is repeated until the equilibrium of the
constitute equation is satisfied. In this repetition, the
viscoelastic material constants are updated following the
Gauss-Newton method. In addition, we evaluated the
method by using data obtained from a simulated impact on a
viscoelastic plate, and the results were rather promising.
Finally, we studied the convergence of the procedure using
various random material constants as the input data.

Keywords: Visco-elasticity, Stress-wave, Inverse-problem,
Finite element method

1. INTRODUCTION
The viscoelastic materials are playing an important role in
many engineering structures. Those materials such as
polymers (Drozdiv and Dorfmann, 2002) are being used, for
examples, to dissipate and to insulate vibration caused by
rotating or reciprocal movement. It also has potential
application in a new Hopkinson pressure bar testing
apparatus (Zhao and Gary, 1995; Zhao et al., 1997;
Salisbury, 2001; Benatar et al., 2003; Casem et al., 2003).
Therefore having the data of the material, particularly
related with their mechanical characteristics, are essential.
Unfortunately, identifying those data are often not easy due
to limitation enforced by the standard testing procedure.
American Society for Testing and Materials devised ASTM
E139-06 Standard Test Methods for Conducting Creep,
Creep-Rupture, and Stress-Rupture Tests of Metallic
Materials is, unfortunately, only suitable for an extremely
low loading rate. Another standard test, ASTM D6048-07
Standard Practice for Stress Relaxation Testing of Raw
Rubber, Unvulcanized Rubber Compounds, and
Thermoplastic Elastomer, is only suitable for a certain
specimen design and well-specified loading technique.
Neither standard can be used on medium to high strain rate
loading condition, or on a thin film polymer specimen (Ju
and Liu, 2002).

Despite of those standards, many scientists, such as Blanc
(1993); Hillstrom et al. (2000); Lemerle (2002); Soderstrom
(2002), have devised a number of testing procedures, and
those procedures can be classified into the vibratory method,
the wave propagation method, and the ultrasonic method. It
is quite clear that those divisions are according to the strain
rate involved in the test. The vibratory method is only
suitable for the frequency response up to some hundreds Hz
(for examples, see Pintelon et al. (2004), Araujo et al.
(2010), and Barkanov et al. (2009)). Therefore, this
particular method is designed for materials with high
damping property. For an extremely high strain-rate, within
the frequency spectrum of 0.5 MHz to 5 MHz, one would
need an ultrasonic method (Lemerle, 2002). Recently,
Casimir and Vinh (2012) enhanced Le Rolland-Sorins
double pendulum proposed in 1934 by replacing the original
cantilever specimen with a simple supported bending
specimen. This particular method is interesting in its
simplicity and it can be used to obtain the complex Young
modulus at a low frequency of 0.15 Hz. Another proposal
in the group of the vibratory-based method is given by Kim
and Lee (2009), which proposed an identification scheme by
minimizing data obtained from an experiment and those
from a finite element analysis. This proposal is similar to the
present proposal in this respect. However, the two are
diametrically different in the aspects of the viscoelastic
material representation and range of the frequency of
interest. Kim and Lee (2009) proposal relied on the
fractional-derivative model of the material; our proposal is
based on the Prony series expansion. We interested in
application at higher frequency range. Using a similar
viscoelastic representation, Martinez-Agirre and Maria Jesus
Elejabarrrieta (2011) proposed another vibratory based
method that was designed for a high damping material or
material having mechanical properties that strongly
depending on the frequency. In this approach, instead of
minimizing discrepancy with numerical data, the
discrepancy was measured with respect to a theoretical
prediction. For the strain-rate range in the between of the
406

two, one should rely on a wave propagation method (Blanc,
1993). Many existing wave propagation methods exploit the
benefit of the simplicity of the wave propagation theory in
one dimension (see, for examples, Kolsky (1963); Graff
(1975); Doyle (1989)). This phenomenon can be observed in
a slender bar specimen subjected to a pulse impact-force.
Using the bar specimen, Blanck (Blanc, 1993), Lemerle
(Lemerle, 2002), and Lundber and Blanc (Lundberg and
Blanc, 1988) demonstrated that viscoelastic property could
be inferred from some mechanical responses such
displacement or strain at two different locations. The
inference is on the basis of the following formula:

) , ( ) , (
) (
1 2
1 2
e u e u
e
x x
x x
c

=
(1)
where
1
x
and
2
x
are the measurement locations at the bar,
u is the phase angle of the quantity (the displacement of the
strain), e is the angular frequency, and
) (e c
is the phase
velocity. And then, the wave speed is used to compute the
complex Young's modulus. Hilton et al. (2004) argued that
the viscoelastic material constants could be identified by
inversely solving the convolution integral for viscoelastic
material derived by Christensen (1981) using the elastic-
viscoelastic analogy. However, until this time, it is still very
difficult to convert the complex Young's into the Young's
modulus in the time domain. Expressing the property in the
time domain is necessary because the existing mechanics for
viscoelastic materials is much well-established in the time
domain than that in the frequency domain (see, for
examples, (Zienkiewics and Taylor, 2000, Section 3.2
Viscoelasticity) and (Mesquite and Code, 2003)).
Furthermor existing commercial finite element packages
such as ANSYS (Kohnke, 1999) and ABAQUS
(Abaqu2008) require a user to supply the material data in
the time domain. Those reasons are major limitation of the
existing identification method in the group of the wave
propagation. In addition, the method is only applicable when
the involved wave length is much longer than the largest
dimension of the specimen cross section. Soderstrom (2002)
shows that if the wave length is longer than d 10 , where
d is the specimen diameter, then the valid frequency range
is smaller than
) 10 /( d c
, where c is the longitudinal wave
speed. However, this limitation is due to the underlying
theory where Eq. (1) was derived, and it seems to us, this
limitation can be avoided when a higher order
approximation, see for an example Anderson (2006), is used
in deriving the governing dynamics.

This work aims to develop a new technique to identify the
viscoelastic material property within the wave propagation
method. It is designed to overcome limitations mentioned
above. In addition, the technique allows one to use a more
complex specimen geometry such as a plate specimen; On
some circumstances, such a specimen geometry is more
preferable. Therefore, the method does not limit the valid
frequency range of the stress-wave involved during the test.
We should note that the underlying theory used in deriving
the equation of motion often strictly limits the use of the
theory such as those in the slender bar case.

In the present work, we combine the finite element method
and the nonlinear least-squares method to infer the
viscoelastic material property. In general, the use of such
approach is not completely new; Aoki et al. (1997), for an
example, has adopted the approach to infer the Gurson
material constants because those data are difficult to be
measured directly from an experiment. In addition, Mahata
et al. (2004); Mahata and Soderstrom (2004) employed the
nonlinear least-squares method to establish a non-parametric
wave propagation function in the frequency domain.
Matzenmiller and Gerlach (2001) utilized the
correspondence principle of viscoelastic materials and a
numerical technique to inverse the relaxation function in the
Laplace domain. They also assumed that the material bulk
modulus does not depend on time; the same assumption is
used in this work. A more common approach is to
parametrize the material property function such as using a
Prony series (Tschoegl, 1989), and the parameters are
determined accordingly. Emri and Tschoegl (1993)
presented a recursive computer algorithm technique to
determine the relaxation time from relaxation modulus data.
Subsequently, Tschoegl and Emri (1993) also utilized the
theoretical storage and loss functions, and demonstrated
using experimental data (Emri and Tschoegl, 1994, 1995).

2. MECHANICAL BEHAVIOR OF VISCOELASTIC
MATERIALS
2.1 General
The state of stress in an elemental volume of a loaded body
is defined in terms of six components of stress, and
expressed in a vector form as
| |
T
zx yz xy z y x
t t t t t t t ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( t t t o o o o =
(2)
where
x
o
,
y
o
, and
z
o
are the normal components of stress,
and
xy
t
,
yz
t
, and
zx
t
are the shear components of stress.
Corresponding to the six stress components in Eq. (2) is the
state of strain, which can also be written in a vector:

| |
T
zx yz xy z y x
t t t t t t t ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( c c c c =
(3)
Using the elastic-viscoelastic analogy Christensen (1981),
the theory of elasticity has been extended to the viscoelastic
material. For the viscoelastic material, the material
properties are a function of time and the past response
affecting the present stress state. Both the phenomena can be
expressed by a hereditary integral:
}
c
c
=
t
t
t
t
t t E t
0
' d
'
) ' (
) ' ( ) (
c
o
(4)
where
) (t E
is a matrix of relaxation function and ' t is a
dummy variable. For the isotropic viscoelastic material, the
relaxation function is expressed as:
407


(
(
(
(
(
(
(
(

=
) ( 0 0 0 0 0
0 ) ( 0 0 0 0
0 0 ) ( 0 0 0
0 0 0 ) ( )) ( 1 ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) (
0 0 0 ) ( ) ( ) ( )) ( 1 ( ) ( ) (
0 0 0 ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( )) ( 1 (
) (
t G
t G
t G
t c t v t c t v t c t v
t c t v t c t v t c t v
t c t v t c t v t c t v
t E

(5)

where v is Poisson's ratio and is defined as
) 2 1 )( 1 ( v v
E
c
+
=
(6)

Young's modulus E can be expressed as a function of the
shear modulus G :

) 1 ( 2 v G E + =
(7)
For general viscoelastic material in small deformation
regime, the dilatational modulus and the shear modulus
should be assumed to be a function of time. However, there
are many engineering material where the dilatational
deformation does not depend on time (Flugge, 1975).
Hence, the dilatation deformation is completely elastic

Ke s 3 = (8)

where s is the hydrostatic pressure, K is the bulk modulus,
and e is the volumetric change. Hence, a simple uniaxial
tensile test or a compression test is sufficient to obtain the
bulk modulus K . For this reason, in this study, K is
assumed to be a known data and G is the only unknown to
be sought. The viscoelastic stress-strain relationship can also
be written in form of compliance function:

}
c
c
=
t
t
t
t
t t C t
0
' d
'
) ' (
) ' ( ) (
o
c
(9)
where
) (t C
is a matrix of the compliance retardation
function. We should note that in Eq. (4) and Eq. (9), we
assume the initial stress
0 ) 0 ( = o
and the initial strain
0 ) 0 ( = c
, which are generaly applicable.

2.2 Parameterization by Prony Series Expansion
When the data of the stress (Eq. (2)) and the strain (Eq. (3))
at a point exist, Eq. (4) or Eq. (9) can be used to obtain the
material data
) (t E
or
) (t G
. However, solving the both
equations inversely are not easy due to the numerical
stability. Such as a process is called deconvolution, and its
results are often sensitive to the data error depending on the
condition number of the problem. Parameterization of the
unknown variable in a deconvolution often leads to much
accurate solution as demonstrated in Gunawan et al. (2006).
Fortunately, parameterization of the viscoelastic material,
such as using Prony series expansion, has been widely used
in representing the viscoelastic characteristics. The Prony
series expansion of the shear relaxation
) (t G
is given by a
series of the exponential function:

+ =
N
i
t
i
G e G t G
i
1
/
) (
t (10)
Where
) (
0
= G G C G
i i
,
0
G
is the initial shear modulus,

G

is the final shear modulus,
i
t
is the relaxation time, N is the
number of Maxwell elements, and
i
C
is a constant. For the
number of Maxwell unit 1 = N , a standard linear model for a
solid viscoelastic material is obtained. The model has three
unknown parameters, and it is capable to express the stress
relaxation or the strain retardation phenomena of many solid
viscoelastic materials particularly within a short range of
time. For the standard linear solid model, the shear
relaxation function can be reduced to

+ = G e G G t G
t t /
0
) ( ) (
(11)
The number of Maxwell unit N is related to the range of
time duration of interest. Emri and Tschoegl (1997) noted
following regarding N and difficulty in finding unique
value for the parameter: two spectrum lines (or two
Maxwell units) per logarithmic decades (i.e., a spacing of
0.5) appears to be most convenient. Larger spacings would
be less accurate although Baumgaertel and Winter (1989)
obtained good results with a spacing of 0.7. Smaller
spacings, on the other hand, are likely to be difficult to
handle (Emri and Tschoegl, 1993). This difficulty also
appears in the present proposal. Therefore, we limit our
discussion, following Emri and Tschoegl (1997)'s advise,
that for the time duration of interest of 100
s
, only one
Maxwell unit is relevant, and the related constants need to
be determined.

3. INVERSE ANALYSIS FOR MATERIAL
PROPERTY IDENTIFICATION
To simplify derivation of the present approach, we utilize a
simple experimental setup as shown in Fig. 1; however, the
technique is also applicable for more complex specimen
geometry as demonstrated in Section 4.



Figure 1 A uniaxial impacted bar.

Consider a linear viscoelastic bar subjected to an impact
load as shown in Fig. 1, and we express the material
constants to be estimated in a vector

| |
T
G G x t

=
0
(12)
To obtain x , Eq. (4) or Eq. (9) should be solved for
) (t G
,
and finally, Eq. (11) is used to calculate the values of
0
G
,
408

G
, and t so that the differences between
) (t G
obtained by
Eq. (4) and by Eq. (11) are minimum. It is clear that the
necessary data for the calculation are the stress and the
strain at the same location. Although, the strain can be easily
measured by a strain-gage, but the stress is not easily
evaluated, especially for a rather complex structure.

To circumvent such difficulty, the finite element analysis is
employed. The experimental setup shown in Fig. 1 is quite
simple and the applied load
) (t P
and
) (t c
can be measured
in the experiment. The stress at the measurement point can
be computed by a finite element method for the presumed
viscoelastic material constants as the first approximation.
The measured strain
) (t c
is taken as the reference strain
) (t
r
c
; therefore, an error vector can be established as:

'
'
) ' (
) ' ( ) ( ) (
~
0
dt
t
t
t t E t t
r
t
r
c
c
=
}
c
o o
(13)

In the subsequent iterations, we minimize the error function,
in the least-squares sense, by adjusting the material
constants using Gauss-Newton method and adjusting the
stress using the finite element method. The process is
repeated until
2
) (
~
t
r
o
is smaller than a certain limit o . The
detail of the technique is presented chronologicaly in
Algorithm 1.

A few notes needs to be outlined regarding Algorithm 1.
The data involved in a high impact test often are quite large
in size. Therefore, the convolution equation of Eq. (13) must
be solved as quickly as possible. By applying the
convolution theorem, the equation can quickly be solved in
the frequency domain. And, the data can be transformed into
the frequency domain using the fast Fourier transformation
(Brigham, 1974). However, prior the transformation, zeros
as long as the data length should be padded to the tail of
data
r
c
and o to improve the accuracy of the data spectrum
in the frequency domain. In addition, because the magnitude
of strain is significantly smaller than the stress, those data
have to be normalized prior the optimization process,
otherwise the Gauss-Newton algorithm may fail to converge.
And as a final note, in the present implementation, the
central difference approach is used to compute the time
derivative of the stress.

A similar procedure can also be used to minimize the error
function on the basis of the compliance function of Eq. (14);
the both will be evaluated numerically in this work.

) ( '
'
) ' (
) ' ( ) (
~
0
t dt
t
t
t t C t
r
t
r
c
o
c
c
c
=
}
(14)
3.1 Experimental Apparatus and Procedures
The experimental apparatus depicted in Fig. 2 is one of
many possible arrangements to perform the experiment for
this purpose. In this arrangement, a short-stress pulse is
generated by striking the load transfer rod with a ball. The
generated stress pulse can be measured using a pair of gages
attached to the load transfer road. The gages should be
connected to the Wheatstone bridge in a half-bridge
configuration; hence, the strains due to the bending wave, if
any, could be canceled out.



The data from the bridge will be recorded in a computer via
a transient converted and a signal conditioner. The transient
converter allows us to temporarily store the data; it becomes
necessary particularly when the data need to be sampled at
an extremely high rate. Modern signal conditioner usually
has filter feature, which is usefull if the data containing
excessive noise.



Figure 2 The schematic diagram of the air gun impact
system

409

4. NUMERICAL EVALUATIONS
We have verified the above procedure using a number of
specimen types such as a bar specimen, a one-point bend
specimen, and a plate specimen. However, only the results
for the case of the plate specimen are presented due to
limitation of the space. This particular case is also used to
illustrate the proposed procedure.

4.1 Data for Validation
In this section, we present the forward analysis to establish
data for verification the proposed procedure and to select the
objective function among the existing options of Eq. (13)
and Eq. (14). The analysis was performed numerically using
the finite element method so that the necessary data could be
obtained in a well-controlled environment. However, further
verifications on the basis of experimental data are certainly
necessary.

The specimen geometric data, material properties, and
loading conditions are following: the specimen shape is a
square plate with the edge length of 500 mm, and a
thickness of 10 mm. The specimen is assumed to be hanged
in the air, and is made of a viscoelastic material with
following properties:
0
G = 161.54 GPa,

G = 16.154 GPa,
and t = 20 s , and K = 175.0 GPa. A concentrated load is
applied to the middle of the specimen edge where the load
varies with time following a half-sine function with a
loading duration of 50 s . A strain gage is assumed to be
attached at a point located 50 mm ahead of the impact-site.
This experimental design leads to specimen response where
the incident stress-wave can clearly be separated from the
reflected stress-wave. This issue is crucial because when the
reflected stress-wave superimposing the incident stress-
wave, the structural response become too complex, and
convergence is hard to be attained.

The above impact event is performed numerically using
finite element analysis where the finite element mesh of the
model is shown in Fig. 3. Only a half of the specimen is
modeled due to symmetry. The model mesh has 5000 linear
solid elements and 5151 nodes. Although the event is
performed numerically, but it is certainly easy to establish
an experimental apparatus for such a case where a short
stress-pulse can be produced using a small sphere projectile
and the plate specimen can be hanged on the air. The finite
element analysis is conducted for various time-steps and
various element sizes, and their effects on the stress and the
strain at selected measurement point in the analyzed
structure are studied. The largest time-step and element-size
that do not substantially affect the computed stress and
strain are selected for the next analysis. This selection of the
time-step and element-size must be carefully made to save
the computation time, because the present approach requires
that the finite element analysis have to be performed for a
few times. From the analysis, we obtain the stress (see Fig.
5) and the strain (see Fig. 4) as a function of time at the
measurement location. In addition, to accommodate the
error that inherently exists in the measurement process,
small pseudo-random noises are superimposed to the data.


Figure 3 Finite element mesh of a square plate.



Figure 4 The strain time history in x -direction obtained by
the finite element analysis (solid line) and those by solving
Eq. (9) (dotted line).


Figure 5 The stress time history in x -direction obtained
by the finite element analysis (solid line) and those by
solving Eq. (4) (dotted line).
410

It is important to select the best objective function between
Eqs. (13) or (14). For a given strain shown in Fig. 4, the
hereditary integral of Eq. (4) is solved to obtain the stress
presented in Fig. 5 with the dotted line. In the similar
manner, the dotted line in Fig. 4 is obtained by solving Eq.
(9). Figures 4 and 5 show that the strain computed (dotted
line in Fig. 4) from the stress data (solid line in Fig. 5) is
less accurate than the stress computed (dotted line in Fig. 5)
from the strain data (solid line in Fig. 4). The phenomenon
seems to be clear by considering the fact that the
displacement-based finite element analysis produces the
more accurate strain than the stress. Because of this fact, Eq.
(13) is selected as the objective function.

4.2 Inverse Analysis for Identification of Material
Constants
In the inverse analysis, the required data are the reference
strain ) (t
r
c , which are depicted in Fig. 4 with a solid line.
To create realistic `measured data', a small amount of the
normally distributed pseudo-random noise is superimposed
to the data. The ratio of noise to the data is taken as 1.0%.
Another required data are initial assumptions of the
viscoelastic material constants. Because this data will be
used in the finite element analysis, the initial data should
reasonably represent the exact viscoelastic constants of a
given material. Too small initial data of
0
G and

G could
lead to an un-compressible material and ``hour glassing''
may occur during deformation, while too large initial data
may cause the ``locking''. One best way is to employ the
data obtained from a static test for the initialization.
Theoretically, long-term response of a viscoelastic solid will
approach to its elastic response. Therefore, the

G can be
initialized with the static shear modulus, in the present case
8 . 80 =

G GPa. The
0
G must be larger than

G , so then
we assumed 0 . 88
0
= G GPa, or 10.0% higher than the final
shear modulus. The initial relaxation time is taken as 1.0 s ,
which is the same as the sampling-time in the finite element
analysis. The time is also a logical choice by considering the
duration of the impact-force. It is certainly impossible to
identify the relaxation time longer than the loading duration
even of the data actually exists. Therefore, the initial design
variable is | | 0 . 1 0 . 80 0 . 88
0
= x . The strain data presented
in Fig. 4 are utilized, and Algorithm 1 is evaluated for 10
iterations. Figures 6 to 8 show the evolution of the estimated
viscoelastic constants along the iterations. On each iteration,
the finite element analysis is performed to update the stress,
and several sub-iterations are performed to update the
viscoelastic material constants. In Fig. 9, the estimated shear
modulus at the 10-th iteration is compared to the exact shear
modulus. Although the shear relaxation function shows a
relatively good agreement, the estimated viscoelastic
material constants converge to a certain value slightly
deviated from the exact data.




Figure 6 Estimated instantaneous shear modulus along
iteration



Figure 7 Estimated final shear modulus along iteration



Figure 8 Estimated relaxation time along iteration

411




Figure 9 Comparison of estimated and exact shear
relaxation function

4.2.1 Convergence of the Finite-Element Inverse-Analysis
Numerical results in Figs. 6 to 8 indicate that the combined
finite-element inverse-analysis method has a fast rate of
convergence. Following, we study the robustness of the
method particularly with respect to the initial data. The
robustness is examined with respect to the ability of the
procedure to consistently converge for given any initial data
in the feasible domain. For this purpose, wide ranges of
initial data of the viscoelastic material constants are
provided. The initial data of the initial shear modulus is
selected from normally distributed pseudo-random numbers
in the range of the elastic shear modulus to five times larger
than the elastic shear modulus. The initial data of the final
shear modulus is set as the same with the exact final shear
modulus. The initial relaxation time is randomly selected
from uniformly distributed random numbers in the range of
the sampling time to the whole analysis time. For each set of
initial data, the analysis of Algorithm 1 is performed for 5
iterations. Ten data sets are used for the evaluation. The
results are presented in Fig. 10, and it is seen that the
convergence of the Algorithm 1 is consistent and falls
within a reasonable degree of accuracy.


Figure 10 Convergence map of
0
G and t

4.2.2 Effect of the Loading Rate
The coupling method of finite element and inverse analysis
can identify the viscoelastic material constants using the
data of viscoelastic response of the structure. If the structure
is statically loaded, the response data will not contain the
viscoelastic property, i.e., the stress relaxation and the strain
retardation. Consequently, such data cannot be used to
identify the viscoelastic material constants. This fact
suggests that the loading rate affects the accuracy in the
estimation of viscoelastic material constants. Different
loading rate can be obtained by varying the loading
duration. The shorter loading duration provides the higher
loading rate. In this section, the effect of loading
duration, load t , on accuracy of the estimated viscoelastic
material constants is examined. The loading profile is
assumed to be similar to the profile of a half-sine function.
The loading duration is varied to 40, 50, 75 and 100 s , and
for each case, the analysis is performed for 100 s . It is
easy to produce such variation of the loading duration, for
an example, by changing the length of the impact.The
results, summarized in Table 1, suggest that the estimated
initial shear modulus, final shear modulus and the relaxation
time are slightly affected by the loading duration.

Table 1 Effect of the loading duration to the estimated
viscoelastic material constants
s) ( load t
Exact
0 0
/ G G
Exact
/

G G
Exact
/t t
0 0.94 0.93 1.15
50 0.93 0.93 1.13
75 0.92 0.93 1.12
100 0.91 0.90 1.11


5 CONCLUSIONS
A new method is proposed to identify the parameters of a
simple viscoelastic model in form of the Prony series
expansion. The method is basically based on a coupling of
the finite element analysis and inverse analysis. The method
estimates the parameters by minimizing discrepancy of the
stress-time historiesutilizing the Gauss-Newton method
at a reference point selected by the user. It takes advantages
of the finite element analysis; hence, the proposal, unlike the
existing methods, is also suitable for complex specimen
geometry. However, verification on the basis of
experimental data for various specimen geometries is
necessary to further assess the accuracy and robustness of
the proposal.

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